Dr Hannah Fry won the Christopher Zeeman medal in August for her contributions to the public understanding of the mathematical sciences, so Ian Sample invited her on the podcast to discuss her love of numbers. Plus, he asks, can we really use this discipline to predict human behaviour?

Fifty years ago, the average woman in Botswana had seven children. Now she will have fewer than three. Enabling women to control their fertility has had huge ramifications for their health, education and employment – could President Trump’s ‘global gag rule’ threaten this? Nicola Davis travels to Botswana to investigate

The US has been in the grip of an ‘opioid epidemic’ since the 1990s, and now a rise in opioid prescriptions is being seen across the pond. Ian Sample investigates and asks: what can we do the curb the looming crisis?

Invasive species have been blamed for wiping out native populations. Conservationists face a hard choice: should they kill one species to save another? The answer is often yes. Nicola Davis explores this dilemma and asks whether there’s a more compassionate approach

This degenerative illness has a few genetic quirks which scientists believe could cause secondary health benefits. Emerging research suggests that people with Huntington’s are less sickly, don’t get cancer as often and even have more brain cells. Hannah Devlin investigates.